The Hajj and Religious Politics after 1905 149Menshikov’s support for hajj patronage was, above all, motivated by eco-
nomic and strategic interests. He saw the hajj as enormously useful to Russia in
both regards, and claimed that there had been a recent shift within the govern-
ment, with more officials seeing the hajj as a useful network for Russia to tap
into and control for these reasons. “Until recently,” he wrote, “the Russian gov-
ernment was hostile towards the hajj . . . assumed that the hajj increased Mus-
lim fanaticism and pan-Islamism . . . and actively discouraged [it].” However,
since the pilgrimage “cannot be completely stopped,” in recent years the idea
had emerged to try a policy of “patronage of the pilgrimage” instead. Patronage,
Menshikov noted, promised the government both political and material
rewards. “The truth is that each trip to Mecca and back costs between 300 and
500 rubles: multiply that by 20,000 and you get tens of millions of rubles.” Addi-
tionally, the hajj was a crucial issue in Anglo-Russian rivalries in Persia and the
wider “Muslim East,” as it provided Russia with an opportunity to win the trust
and friendship of its Muslim neighbors. For a lasting peace with its neighboring
“Muslim empires,” Russia needed to “convince Islam” that “Russia bears no fun-
damental enmity toward it.” By organizing the hajj, Russia could demonstrate
to the “masses in the East” its “toleration” and good intentions toward Islam.
No less importantly, Menshikov noted, Russia has its “very expensive Volunteer
Fleet,” which is “[perishing] due to insufficient cargo (especially passengers),
and here we have passengers!”^117 This idea was echoed by other officials in the
government, who lamented that Russia had missed out “on émigré transport
and millions in revenues,” and argued that it should “not make the same mis-
take” with the hajj.^118
Over the last years of the empire’s existence, the tsarist government would
embrace a more active, if also quiet, role as patron of the hajj. Through inter-
ministerial conferences held in 1908–9, ROPiT and the Volunteer Fleet were
persuaded to join forces and cooperate in organizing the seasonal transport
of hajj pilgrims. Together they created a new society, called the United Agency
of the Volunteer Fleet and the Russian Society for Steam Navigation and
Trade, which offered organized, subsidized transportation for Russia’s hajj pil-
grims. They split the traffic, each offering service along different routes,
through three Black Sea ports (Sevastopol, Batumi, and Odessa), to Beirut and
Jeddah. A July 1914 ad in Terdzhuman offered pilgrims a variety of options,
and announced that the steamship companies were authorized to give out
passports.^119